by Peter Dawes
Talbot moaned and I shuddered. The next time his tongue slithered across my skin, I felt something sharp with it, trying desperately not to envision the teeth these inhuman creatures possessed while knowing that was precisely what pricked my flesh. His mouth hovered over my pulse point and it was all I could do not to clench my eyes shut. Instead, I focused long and hard on the bright oranges and yellows blazing not far away from where I sat. “You want me to succumb?” I asked, my voice a whisper.
“I want you to relent to what you know is best,” he said. “What we both want. You want your dear ones protected. I want what your father stole.”
“And if I don’t give it to you, you’ll kill them?”
“That is the way this world works, Christian. As a mercenary, you should respect that.”
“I do.” The lump in my throat bobbed as I swallowed hard. My world had become the colors. Little more. “And if I give you what you want, what becomes of everything else?”
“Does it truly concern you?” Talbot chuckled. His lips pursed, placing a kiss on my throat. “One of these days, my master’s plans will be realized through me, and the world will be ours regardless. Better to be in control of your fate and the fate of those you cherish.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Then hold still, my precious boy.” I heard the smile in his voice when he spoke again. “I promise to make it a very sweet surrender.”
Finally, I allowed my eyes to shut, drawing one last breath in anticipation. “I’m afraid there is nothing sweet about how I intend to surrender.”
“I beg your –”
Before he could finish the statement, I lifted both hands and poured all of the focus I could into the mental image I held of the flames. Truth be told, I didn’t want to see the agent of my own demise. Not yet, anyway. I channeled the natural bond I had with fire and called to it again and again, fueling the hearth. The oil lamps in their sconces. The cups of ale on the wooden counter that had not been depleted, using it to contribute to the chaotic inferno I intended to create. Talbot stumbled back from me and I exhaled a breath, relenting toward lifting my lids at last to behold how I would perish.
“Stop this at once!” Talbot shouted. “You’ll die with me.”
“I am well aware of that.” Narrowing my eyes, I rose to a stand and paced closer to the hearth. The roar of the fire had grown outside of its box, the lamps already licking flames at the wooden infrastructure of the building. Behind my back, I heard the sound of Talbot chanting an incantation and spun around to face him. I extended one of my hands toward the front door and glared, not bothering to peer at the entrance before causing it to go up in flames. “You said I won’t leave here alive,” I quipped. “So, we burn together.”
Turning around, I set my sights on the back exit, shifting the direction of my hand and knowing that I was about to seal my own fate. It was the only thing that would keep the rest of them safe, I told myself, and yet my heart filled with sorrow as I envisioned my loved ones one last time. The boards of the back door smoldered while the temperature of the room rose. “Te amo, amico mio,” I said, intending these to be my last words.
Except that footfalls interrupted me, as did the sudden jerking of my sword from out of its sheath. My focus on the fire broke, but I shifted my attention too late as a sudden, inexplicably horrifying amount of pain surged through me. My mouth fell open, gaze still on the door before my eyes shifted down to the genesis of the agony. I saw metal gleaming in the fire light, protruding from the center of my torso and just above my gut.
Talbot extracted the blade before I could make as much as a whine. I toppled to the floor, unable to bear my own weight while both hands came to rest over the wound. As dark red coated my fingers, I shook and looked upward at the figure of Talbot, while he stepped around me and peered down at where I lay. “You stupid mortals,” he said. “Always needing to go about this the difficult way.”
He crouched before me and gripped a fistful of my cloak, pulling me up enough to look him in the eyes. I grimaced, resting my weight on my elbow while producing a strangled scream at being moved again. A cold, sadistic smile traced across Talbot’s lips. “Well you wanted to be a martyr,” he countered. “Did you really think I was just going to surrender to your suicide?” He freed one hand and as he lifted it, the flames I had created started to die down, retreating back into the hearth and lamps which had created them. Talbot shook his head, rueful, while glancing back at me. “Now, both of us know you’re going to die like this and your family, then, with you. Are you sure you still want to reject my offer?’
“Go to hell,” I managed, my voice strained.
“I’m sorry, what was that again?” Talbot reared back with the blade and plunged it through me again, gripping onto my shirt and cloak tight while the sword drove through my shoulder. I cried out, tears streaming from my eyes I couldn’t stop, my vision swimming while I nearly begged for him to stop. It hurt more when he extracted the blade and I didn’t know what to pray for; deliverance or death. He laughed, lifting the weapon to his mouth and licking the blood from it. “Won’t be much of this left soon,” he said. “It’ll make turning you difficult if you hold out much longer. Perhaps I’ll ask your brother. Or that foreign friend of yours Jane told me about. What do you think?”
“You leave him the fuck alone,” I countered. Somehow, I found some hidden reserve left in me. Agony racked me from head to toe, and yet I lifted my hand and pressed it against Talbot’s face, singeing the flesh and forcing him to drop the sword. I collapsed onto my side as he fell backward, reaching for the shoulder wound, grabbing a fistful of my cloak with it and feeling the embroidered black rose in my palm. No, I told myself. No, no, no, no… I had to get out of there. I had to warn them all somehow.
“Binding…” I spoke the word aloud just as the thought came to me. Talbot lifted up onto all fours, but I ignored him, gripping the garment tighter while feeling the fabric turn sticky with blood. I gritted my teeth, pulling myself back up onto my elbow. “Evocatio spiritualis,” I said. Swallowing hard, I tried to clear my thoughts of all things. Talbot. The pain. The fear racing through me like quicksilver. I murmured the words to the spell I had cast only a short while ago, seeing Jane confined to the bed and trying to use the magic to force myself together again. Tingles raced up my spine. The energy I drew in flowed from hand to cloak and prickled at my skin as I repeated the spell over and over again.
‘I bind myself. I bind myself. I bind…’
Until something stopped up the words from forming in my throat and prevented them from being birthed. The sound of shifting footsteps from behind me told me Talbot had come to a stand, but the pain through my chest bore such a bite to it, I could no longer fashion thought. As the weapon withdrew, I fell onto my back, seeing the ceiling above me and darkness encroach upon my periphery. There were no other pleas left for me to offer. No other tricks up my sleeve. The black overtook me and I was powerless to resist.
My pulse stilled inside my ears. The world turned cold before fading out of existence altogether.
Stretched out on a wooden floor – in Tavistock, England – I drew my final breath and perished.
Epilogue
I had no idea how long I had been sleeping when my consciousness woke again, but the world had become black and stayed that way. I gasped as if expecting to breathe and shivered, head turning from side to side in an attempt for me to gage my bearings. I saw nothing and gave into the compulsion to scream, knowing I was lying on my back and yet, not able to feel anything beneath me. The sound I produced resonated in a discordant manner before fading abruptly. I fought the urge to panic while aware I should have a pulse thudding in my chest.
“Oh God, where am I?” I asked, ignoring how frightened my voice sounded. “What happened to me?” I lifted my hands, reaching out toward into the darkness without hitting anything solid. Pulling them back, I shook and wished there was something to claw at, but encountered nothing. Brief tendrils of b
lue light began accompanying my violent flails and when one caught the rough impression of what looked to be a plant, I immediately stopped. I flicked my hand again, spying the item of interest and finally identifying it as a root surrounded by what could only be dirt.
If that was so, than this meant I was underground.
“Bloody hell.” Shutting my eyes, I tried to swallow and failed to feel the usual contraction of my throat muscles. Everything felt off somehow, out of sync and at the same time my mind was not yet able to process what I might be experiencing. Was this a dream, I wondered as I paused to stare at the space in front of me.
Regardless of the answer, I realized I had no other alternative than to progress forward.
I hesitated, steeling my nerves, before attempting to figure out what I needed to do next. Go above ground, that much was certain, but each time I reached for something – the root, a clod of dirt – I snatched thin air, which meant I had to form a different tactic. Well, I reasoned to myself, if this was a dream, the normal rules didn’t apply. Preempting the decision with a nod, I willed myself away from the rational and into the bizarre, picturing myself simply levitating toward where I might see the sun. As foolish as it left me feeling, within seconds, it began to work.
The laugh I produced sounded just as twisted as the entire experience had become. Passing through the earth, I saw the sky and stopped, righting myself until my feet settled where the ground should be. Once more, I failed to feel anything under me, and at first I crouched and groped like mad for purchase on the grass in an effort to prove my fingers could do something other than pass through objects without interacting. As I did, though, another revelation forced me to pause and take stock of it as well.
While the ground should have been a more verdant hue of green, it was a blander shade, and yet one not without some ethereal quality to it. I thought about the tendrils of blue, turning my gaze toward my hand and seeing a faint light ebb and flow from me as though I had become a living wick and it, the fire on my skin. I still wore the clothes of my employ, and saw the cloak hanging from my shoulders when I turned my head to study the rest of my attire, but the glow gained orange sparks when the first pang of fear ripped through my already shattered psyche.
“What is all of this? Am I dead?” I murmured. A frown tugged at the corners of my mouth, the flecks of orange intermingling all the more with the iridescent blue as my panic grew in intensity. I made the motion of breathing again, forcing myself to look downward again and hone in on the sight of the grass. My feet only needed to settle on it, I told myself. That was all I needed for now. I would figure the rest out when I could just stand instead of levitating.
A full flash of red overtook me until I became mad enough to force the soles of my boots down the sparse space I needed them to descend. Once I settled, the sapphire ebbed back into life as my nerves quieted, apt to take the minor victory, just as I promised myself. My gaze lifted to regard the horizon, seeing the moorland stretched out before me with an eastward road running several acres away. Still, the color of the world was wrong in a way which unnerved me.
I knew it was daytime, but the light still seemed faded, much like everything else aside from the colors flickering around my aura. The clouds didn’t appear as white. I wrapped both arms around my chest and collapsed onto the ground, in a seated position, wishing I could feel something that indicated I had form or substance to me. There was no nausea, however. No protest in my limbs when I adjusted my position. A soul-piercing scream made it past my lips and yet, it failed to burn my chest or my throat no matter how long and hard I let it out. Currents of vermillion bled through the blue surrounding me and in that moment, I would have sold my soul for the ability to cry. Unable to do even that, I felt the urge to simply surrender to numbness while not knowing if I would even feel that again.
Slumping to my side, I drew my knees up to my chest and hugged them there. The clouds drifted from one part of the horizon to the next and misery mixed with exhaustion as I watched them pass. It was too much to take in that moment – too many things to process – so I decided against it for the time being.
The world faded into black once more. For how long, I could not tell.
To Be Continued…
Preview: Divided by Night
Book Four of The Vampire Flynn
coming Fall 2015
After ten years spent in hiding, the sins of the past have come to visit Peter Dawes again. Living out his life with his watcher, Monica, the two have forged a family within the throes of denial. But something sinister lurks in the shadows, released by the spell which granted the rogue seer back his life. And both it and the Supernatural Order have had a decade to prepare for his return.
Ready to stand against those formidable opponents, his greatest enemy might be the one lurking underneath the skin. As Peter gets pulled into a cataclysm stretching across a continent, he discovers the vampire he once was still lingers after all this time. A whisper has become a voice and adopted his old name.
And this time, Flynn will not be so easily silenced.
Keep reading for a special preview.
Prologue: Divided by Night
I had not meant to yell at the woman, and if she had not been the first to try my patience, I might not have. By the latter part of the afternoon, however, she became that weight causing my composure to snap; that thing which finally hurtled my mind into chaos. My pulse thundered in my ears. My blood pressure rose and as I tightened my grip on my stethoscope, I turned to face the source of my vexation – a small Costa Rican nurse who had been assigned to serve as my assistant.
She paled and stepped backward, her eyes widening.
My chest rose and fell in deep breaths, the impetus to stalk closer overwhelming me. A thrill tickled at my spine, but somehow I managed to suppress any sign of it as my gaze flicked down to the hypodermic needle, now shattered on the floor. The inoculation I had intended to administer to my patient seeped onto the tile, provoking me to press the heel of my hand against my forehead. “Clean it up right this minute,” I said, managing through my fledgling Spanish.
Rather than turning away, she stood, frozen with fear.
“Now.” My hand shot away from my head, finger pointing in an arbitrary direction. “Before I force you onto your knees to pick it up with your bare hands.” Sparks danced across my field of vision, and while I could not be certain if I had issued the command in Spanish or English, the intention carried across language barriers. She spun on her heels, dashing away while parting a room full of villagers still waiting to be seen. I watched her leave, my heart still racing and each breath I took shallow; agitated. It took until she disappeared around a corner for me to realize what I had done.
It was not the way the words echoed in my ears or that I had finally calmed myself once the source of my irritation had departed. The crowd who had watched her leave shifted the weight of their stares onto me and suddenly, I knew what ugliness they beheld. A child began crying. Their mother gathered them close while my mouth motioned in an effort to force calmer speech past my lips. Nothing which came to mind formed enough apology – not with only one year of practice in a completely foreign tongue – and as my gaze shifted to my patient, it was all I could do not to groan. He tensed as though I had shown him the devil in the doctor’s eyes.
This time, the breath I took did settle me enough for me to finish what I had started, but after messes were cleaned and another needle procured, I passed off my stethoscope to another doctor and headed to the front door with no explanation. The air had turned thick and my mind clouded, a headache wanting to form and my jaw stuck in a perpetual state of being clenched. It seemed the wisest course of action; if another patient proved to be difficult, I feared how I might lose my temper next.
It had been twelve months since we had fled Italy and I felt less human than I had in Rome.
Swallowing hard, I squinted against the blaring sun and made a hasty exit from the building. My time as a vampire co
ntinued to haunt me, and though I could march away from the clinic and not incinerate in the process, it did little to help my state of mind. My fingernails dug into my palms, the scant amount of people circulating outside the clinic giving me a wide berth. Not a soul dared to interrupt me in my march toward the sprawling, ranch-style building which held the volunteers’ dormitories, though whispers from the minds of several passersby hopscotched in and out of my brain.
One year in hiding, and I still could not forget what had brought us here, either.
My eyes shut once or twice, my other senses leading me to the room I shared with my fellow refugee. As I entered the modest-sized living space, my thumb flicked across the simple wedding band I wore while I held out hope the quixotic woman I had married was not yet home. A radio played in the distance, my Spanish filter turned off enough for it to become little more than irritating background noise. Slamming the door closed, I locked myself in solitary, choosing the dark of the bedroom in which to retreat.
I sat upon the bed and cradled my head in my hands. A distinct part of me wanted to sink into a lie, saying this had been the first time my temper had flared and would be the last. A year played out inside my mind, though, with several vignettes arguing a case. The moment I had argued with another volunteer doctor over a diagnosis, for instance. And the first and last time the head priest of the Catholic mission, Arturo Santiago, asked me to pray over a meal. Yes, I could recount ten days of being settled for each one wrapped in a tempest, but it could not be denied. I felt disconnected from all of them. I had killed their kind without impunity for five years and had been thrust into the midst of their clumsiness. Their paranoia. Their absurd short-sightedness.
Humans – bloody humans. They would be the death of me.
Whatever length of time had passed between when I first sat and when the door shut again, I could not be certain. The sound startled me out of a mental spiral, though – enough for me to realize I was still in no mood for entertaining company. “Peter?” The voice lilting from the entryway bore the intonation of an inquiry, forcing me to wince. She always sensed me and I always sensed her. In this moment, I considered our psychic link more of a curse than a blessing.
